Begin your practice with the crane-shaped stance.

The series of intense "sparring" sessions caused Xia Dong's combat experience to snowball. In this process, his superior spiritual sense, which was stronger than others of his level, played a crucial role.

Faced with the overwhelming pressure of the giant serpent, an ordinary cultivator who had just begun his journey into immortality would probably have lost his composure and become stiff in his movements.

However, Xia Dong's spiritual sense allowed him to forcibly calm his mind and maintain absolute composure in the blink of an eye.

Furthermore, during each replay, the contractions of the serpent's muscles and the friction of its scales during the battle were infinitely slowed down and dissected. He used this combat experience, gained through physical suffering, as instinctively and smoothly in his next dodge and counterattack.

Of course, how much real lethality this closed-door "sparring" can generate can only be truly tested in actual combat when fighting against "treacherous" human cultivators or real wild demonic beasts.

However, Xia Dong knew very well that he was now completely different from his previous self in terms of practical experience, and was much stronger.

Now his use of the Crane Shadow Step has reached a level of perfection, where he can do it as he pleases.

In the past, when using the Crane Shadow Step, the only goal was speed, accuracy, and stability. But now, under the extreme pressure of dodging and weaving and evading the giant snake's attacks, Xia Dong's movements have even begun to subtly exude a Daoist charm.

With each step he took in the void, he subconsciously stepped on certain invisible "nodes" where the spiritual energy of the surrounding world flowed.

The landing of the foot not only allows one to borrow force and deflect it, but also allows one to absorb and refine this trace of spiritual energy in an extremely subtle moment, in order to make up for the mana consumption generated when using the movement technique.

This experience of harnessing the power of heaven and earth is truly indescribable.

Besides his unwavering training and constant beatings, Xia Dong would also turn his attention to the icy pool beside the cliff in his spare time.

He rolled up his trousers, found some tools, and began laboriously dredging the silt from the bottom of the pool. This silt was no ordinary filth, but rather a natural fertilizer formed from the sediment and fermentation of the excrement of the aquatic fish over the years.

The fish in the pool were originally just ordinary fish from the mountain stream. Later, Xia Dong often poured in the fish with the waste pills he had refined and the dregs left over from brewing medicine, and these fish began to have a somewhat mystical appearance.

Ever since that night when the giant serpent breathed in and out the moonlight by the cold pool, the rich moonlight and spiritual mist were reflected in the water, and the entire pool was nourished by the moonlight.

Looking at the pond now, the fish have undergone a complete transformation. Their bodies have become slender and streamlined, and their originally dark gray scales have transformed into fine scales that shimmer with a faint silver light. When they swim in the clear water, they are like streaks of silver lightning, incredibly agile and radiating extremely pure water-based spiritual energy.

This spirit fish ate the pool water containing moonlight and medicinal power, and its excrement, mixed with the silt formed from the decay of aquatic plants and fallen leaves, was naturally a top-grade spiritual fertilizer containing amazing vitality.

Xia Dong dredged up basket after basket of the dark, faintly fragrant silt, preparing to personally cultivate a spiritual field of his own on the sunny flat land next to the cave.

For Xia Dong, the process of clearing land turned into a wondrous spiritual practice.

Under the slow operation of the Divine Treasury Chapter of the "Changchun Xingqi Jue" and the coverage of powerful divine sense, the earth in Xia Dong's eyes became completely different.

He was originally a skilled physician with a deep understanding of the flow of meridians in the human body. At this moment, in his perception, this seemingly lifeless soil and rocks seemed to be alive, with their own unique aura flowing through them.

The direction of the earth's veins is like the eight extraordinary meridians in the human body, and the nodes in the soil are the acupoints of the earth.

"So, the universe itself also has meridians and acupoints." A sense of enlightenment rose in Xia Dong's heart.

Following this mysterious intuition, Xia Dong's movements with the hoe were no longer simply brute force digging, but rather carried a charm similar to a doctor's "acupuncture and massage".

With each strike of his medicinal hoe, he precisely severed the stagnant "impurities" in the earth's meridians, then filled the "apertures" of the earth with the life-giving spiritual fertilizer from the bottom of the pool, thereby regulating the earth's veins and guiding the surrounding spiritual energy to converge on this small field.

Turning the soil, leveling the ground, fertilizing, and irrigating.

Under his guidance, this once barren wasteland seemed to have undergone a kind of "renewal" ritual.

When the last piece of spiritual mud was filled into the corresponding array eye, Xia Dong felt a sudden brightness before his eyes. A thin layer of spiritual mist appeared out of thin air above the newly cultivated spiritual field.

The soil exudes an intoxicating fragrance, as if he had personally revitalized this land, awakening its vibrant life force that had been dormant for thousands of years.

Xia Dong looked at the land shrouded in a faint spiritual mist and his heart trembled.

He squatted down, grabbed a handful of damp soil, and sniffed it. The refreshing vitality there was something that couldn't be conjured up out of thin air by just a few baskets of fish droppings.

Replaying in his mind the strange state of wielding the hoe and manipulating the earth's veins like a healer applying acupuncture, a bold thought surged into his mind: "Could it be that that mysterious and profound method of cultivation just now inadvertently forced a trace of the faint spiritual vein hidden deep within the Tiger Hill Mountains to the surface?"

Just as he was deeply moved and immersed in this enlightenment of cultivating spiritual fields,

clang!

A faint, ancient, and profound chime suddenly resonated deep within Xia Dong's mind.

The mottled bronze bell that had been dormant in his mind's sea of ​​consciousness now resonated strongly with his understanding of the meridians of heaven and earth.

On the bell, the crimson, twisted characters, resembling oracle bone script, began to move and flicker rapidly, as if trying to piece together and deduce something, yet their brightness seemed to wane due to a lack of follow-up.

Xia Dong suddenly realized the energy required for the ancient clock's calculations. Without hesitation, he took out some spirit stones from his storage bag and held them tightly in his palm.

With a thought, the pure spiritual energy contained within the spirit stone was like water bursting its banks, and was frantically swallowed up by the ancient bronze bell.

The originally crystal-clear spirit stone turned into a clump of grayish-white powder in just a few breaths, which then drifted away in the wind.

Having received ample nourishment from spiritual energy, the ancient bronze bell emitted an even more dazzling scarlet light.

Xia Dong's understanding of medical principles and meridians, as well as his insights and experiences in sorting out the earth's veins and cultivating spiritual fields, were being peeled away by an invisible force and began to be deeply integrated and converged.

Moreover, Gu Zhong even extracted and incorporated into the profound principles of nourishing life force and circulating creation from the Divine Treasury Chapter of the "Eternal Spring Qi Circulation Technique," which he was the main practitioner of.

After an unknown amount of time, the scarlet characters on the clock finally took shape.

A torrent of complex information poured into the depths of Xia Dong's memory, and finally, in his sea of ​​consciousness, it converged into a miraculous new technique—"Ling Nong Gong"!

This "Spirit Farming Skill" is not a technique for fighting and killing, but a special auxiliary skill used to regulate the earth's veins, nurture spiritual plants, and seize the creation of heaven and earth.

To verify the wonders of this technique, Xia Dong picked up the medicine hoe again and silently began practicing the Lingnong Gong method.

This time, the world before his eyes became clearer and clearer.

The earth's crevices and the flow of water veins were as clear as the lines on his palm. With each strike of his hoe, the power penetrated the soil in a specific rhythm, not only increasing the efficiency of tilling and cultivating the land several times over, but also, miraculously, as the earth's energy was unblocked, an extremely gentle and pure life force of the earth flowed back into his body through the hoe handle.

As soon as this vitality entered his body, it flowed directly into his five internal organs, silently nourishing the most primordial "innate qi" within him.

call.

Half an hour later, Xia Dong put away the hoe and let out a long breath.

After a period of intense work, he felt no fatigue whatsoever. Instead, he felt every pore on his body relax, his muscles and bones feel soft and supple, and he felt an indescribable comfort and enjoyment.

Time flies, and the sun and moon alternate.

With the mystical blessing of the "Ling Nong Gong" (Spiritual Farming Technique), Xia Dong sets aside a fixed amount of time each day to renovate the land.

He applied the spiritual fertilizer he retrieved from the bottom of the cold pool precisely according to the "earth vein nodes" recorded in the Ling Nong Gong manual, and then used the living water in the pool, which contained moonlight and spiritual energy, to irrigate it.

Gradually, what was originally just a small, overgrown wasteland at the foot of a cliff has undergone a dramatic transformation through the meticulous cultivation and renovation day after day, summer and winter.

The soil gradually changed from its original grayish-brown to a deep purplish-black. Above the spiritual field, a thin, persistent spiritual mist shrouded the area, making the spiritual energy increasingly abundant and mellow. Standing beside this spiritual field, even just taking a deep breath made one feel refreshed and invigorated.

Xia Dong knew perfectly well that the location of Tiger Hill Cave was probably a rare feng shui treasure land, with a miniature spiritual vein surely lurking deep underground. No wonder Senior Zhang Ping had gone to great lengths to choose this place to open his cave and cultivate in seclusion.

However, with the passing of Senior Zhang Ping, this place lost the careful tending and maintenance of human cultivators. The earth's veins and acupoints were gradually blocked by the passage of time and impurities, causing the divine object to fade into obscurity and gradually become a seemingly ordinary mountain forest and pond.

Now, thanks to his massage and guidance using the "Ling Nong Gong" technique, this precious land has finally regained its vitality.

"Now that this precious land has been cultivated, we can't just leave it empty and overgrown with weeds." Xia Dong rubbed his chin, looking at the purplish-black, lush spiritual field, and began to make plans in his mind.

To truly understand the fertility and growth-promoting effects of this spiritual field, it is necessary to obtain some genuine spiritual herb seeds and plant them.

If we could also obtain some "spiritual rice" seeds used in the cultivation world to strengthen the body's foundation, that would be perfect.

Spirit rice is mild and pure, not only increasing magical power but also greatly benefiting martial arts cultivation. Currently, only a small amount of spirit rice is available on the market, which is far from enough to meet Xia Dong's daily cultivation needs.

These seeds are certainly not easy to obtain.

Fortunately, Xia Dong was not a rogue cultivator without any foundation.

With the Eagle Wolf Guard as his backing and the protection of official backing, many things that seem impossible to independent cultivators are not impossible for him.

"It seems it's time to go back to the city and visit Brother Zhao Ting," Xia Dong thought to himself.

As she pondered, Xia Dong looked up at the sky and then calculated the time.

Before he knew it, he had been cultivating and enduring beatings in the deep mountains, cultivating spiritual fields, for almost a month. Calculating the time, it was almost time for Brother Snake to condense his demon core and absorb the moonlight again.

"Brother Snake, tonight I will assist you in your cultivation!"